"Facebook’s own research revealed that 64 percent of the time a person joins an extremist Facebook Group, they do so because the platform recommended it." I particularly detest the argument "Is the telecom provider responsible for the content of people's conversations"? The bleddy telecom provider doesn't start your call with "Hi press 1 to connect with a group call of Holocaust deniers, if you don't press 1 we'll keep asking you, and ask you to join some white supremacist calls as well. Stay on line for a quick overview of why the earth is flat." The provider is responsible for the recommender system, so the provider is responsible for the carnage that ensues. Legislate the platforms and make every violation punishable on a revenue percentage basis.

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND his enablers in government and right-wing media will shoulder the blame for Wednesday’s insurrection at the US Capitol, but internet platforms—Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter, in particular—have played a fomenting and facilitating role that no one should overlook. In their relentless pursuit of engagement and profits, these platforms created algorithms that amplify hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. This harmful content is particularly engaging and serves as the lubricant for businesses as profitable as they are influential. These platforms also enforce their terms of service in ways that favor extreme speech and behavior, predominantly right-wing extremism.

Since 2015, when Trump announced his presidential campaign, the relationship between internet platforms and the political right has been increasingly symbiotic. The business choices of internet platforms have enabled an explosion not only of white supremacy but also of Covid denial and antivax extremism, which have variously undermined the nation’s pandemic response, nearly sabotaged the presidential election, and played a foundational role in the violence at the Capitol. A huge industry has evolved on the platform giants to raise money from and sell products to people in the thrall of extreme ideologies.

The platforms hide behind the First Amendment to justify their policies, claiming that they do not want to be arbiters of truth. There are two flaws in this argument. First, no thoughtful critic wants any platform to act as a censor. Second, the algorithmic amplification of extreme content is a business choice made in pursuit of profit; eliminating it would reduce the harm from hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories without any limitation on free speech. Renee DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory made this point in a WIRED essay titled “Free Speech Is Not the Same As Free Reach.”

Until this insurrection, many policymakers and pundits have dismissed the rising tide of online extremism, believing it to be safely contained and therefore harmless. Their lack of concern allowed extremism’s audience and intensity to multiply.